Tereza... the redhead

So I sang this ballad
In 1903 not knowing
If my love resembled
A lovely Phoenix dying at evening
Morning will see it rise again

One misty London evening
Some hoodlum who resembled
My love came up to me
And shot me such a glance
I lowered my eyes in shame

I followed this punk who was
Whistling his hands in his pockets
Between houses that appeared like
The Red Sea’s parted waters
I was Pharaoh he the Hebrews

May these waves of bricks crash down
If you were not dearly loved
I am the lord of Egypt
His sister-queen his army
If you are not my only love

At a street corner set ablaze
With lamplight from every window
Wounds in the bloody fog
Where the windows were lamenting
Was a woman who looked like her

The same heartless gaze
And scar across her bare throat
She staggered smashed from a bar
It was then I recognized
Love’s falsehood

When wise Ulysses at last
Found his way to his homeland
His aged dog remembered him
And by a finely woven cloth
His wife awaited his return

Shakuntula’s royal spouse
Weary of conquests rejoiced
When he returned to find her
Wasted from waiting misty-eyed
Stroking her male gazelle

I thought of these happy kings
When this false beloved and she
I was in love with still
Collided shadow to shadow
Rendering me so unhappy

Hell’s built on such regrets o
If only the skies would obliterate my vows
For her kiss the kings of this world
Would die the destitute renowned
Would sell their shadows for her

I’ve wintered inside my past
Come again Easter sun
And thaw a heart more icy
Than the forty of Sebaste
Who weren’t martyred as much as my life

O memory my fair ship
Have we sailed far enough
Across these bitter waters
Have we strayed far enough
From lovely dawn toward cheerless evening

Farewell false love I mistook
For the woman who’s gone away
For the one I lost
In Germany last year
The one I will see no more

Milky way o shining sister
Of Canaan’s white rivers
And lovers’ white bodies
We dead swimmers shall follow
Your course toward other nebulas

I recall another year
An April morning at dawn
I sang my beloved joy
A love song in a manly voice
In love’s own season